


Cutting and Hacking

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything they do is to hurt each other. Chuck!POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cutting and Hacking

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta bubblegum-queen <3

They thought Chuck had lost all of his abilities. That wasn’t true though. He just couldn’t see the future anymore.

His abilities as a prophet were, simply put, the ability to see the entire grand plan play out in his head, but now there is no plan. The plan got torn up. Blown up, maybe. Completely and utterly destroyed, definitely. On the one hand he was relieved since his sleep wasn’t plagued by scenes of someone else’s life and there were no more constant migraines. On the other hand, end of the world. Croats. The people around him either losing their humanity or their sanity, oftentimes both. And his sleep still wasn’t peaceful.

The point being, he hadn’t lost his powers completely. The difference now was that he could only see what was happening during the present. He saw Sam sometimes, still. Little flashes, but there was too much Lucifer for him to remain connected to Sam. He didn’t tell Dean. Dean had a difficult enough time that telling him about the flashes of Sam still there would only make it harder and not be appreciated.

He knew this because he saw a lot of Dean. He thought it might be the proximity, because he saw a lot of Cas too. He didn’t know when his powers became linked to Cas’s life, but it was probably around the time he helped blow up the plan.

He wished he didn’t though. Even ignoring the fact that he didn’t want to be privy to their sex lives, those two were the most fucked up individuals he had come across. And this is the end of the world!

He saw inside them. He saw how much they loved each other. He sees how much they still do. And he sees how everything they do that hurts the other is basically on purpose.

Even Chuck can’t pinpoint when Dean and Cas’s relationship devolved into them hacking at each other emotionally. He doesn’t even know who started it. He thinks it was a steady downward spiral ever since Sam said ‘yes.’ Even though they were separated, Dean knew Sam was still out there, until he wasn’t. That was when Dean started becoming less and less Dean and more ‘Fearless Leader,’ as Cas likes to call him. There’s a reason Cas only calls him Fearless Leader now, and it’s one of Cas’s chosen ways of hurting Dean.

Dean knows it’s Cas’s way of saying he loves him less, that he isn’t the Dean Cas fell for in every way, even if they know it’s not true. Well, Cas and Chuck know. He’s not sure about Dean. Regardless, it made him flinch when Cas started using it, and sometimes it still does. The patronizing, sarcastic way he says ‘ _Fearless Leader_ ’ is what will still catch Dean by surprise, like Cas doesn’t have faith in him. Even when he got used to the name, whenever a mission was just too exhausting or he wasn’t able to get enough alcohol, the name hit its target and hit deep.

Dean reminds him how useless he thinks Cas is. He pointedly leaves him behind on missions, tells Cas it’s to keep him safe. Chuck and Dean both know he really is trying to keep Cas safe. Now that he’s lost Sam, Cas is the only thing left keeping him from putting a bullet in his head and just giving up, and the people in the camp need him alive and running the place. It’s not that he thinks Cas will miss him, or even that Cas needs him (Cas has gotten good at lying), it’s more like their bond has shackled them together and they can’t willingly leave each other. He puts enough of a sneer into the words to lead Cas to believe that he’s just trying to keep him out of the way because he’s a hindrance.

They started sleeping with other people just to spite each other. Dean stopped going to Cas and went to the women in the camp to rub it in that he doesn’t need Cas. Chuck doesn’t know if it was to convince Cas or himself, but it blew up in his face when Cas started having the orgies. Cas’s response that he doesn’t need Dean either.

Cas always knew when Dean had a nightmare, and even when the whole mess was well underway he would show up in Dean’s cabin to soothe them.

Dean couldn’t stand the moments of tenderness in between them trying to slice each other to ribbons. He both craved and dreaded them, moments when he was allowed to be weak and someone would take care of him. But then the next morning it would start up again, the two of them spitting venom at each other. Dean couldn’t stand being “weak” anymore and said things that he regretted, things he never would have said even during their worst fights.

Then Cas told him he regretted every decision that had brought him to Dean, that had brought him here and if given the chance to redo it, he would choose differently every single time. He would never choose Dean.

(It wasn’t true but the damage was done.)

That was the last time they spoke before Dean became Fearless Leader all the time. There was no compassion left, no kindness. Even the miniscule amounts he showed since Sam were gone. He threw himself into finding the Colt, and Chuck knew it was only so he’d have an excuse to go after Lucifer, so he could finally die. Dean would never shoot the gun. Even with the devil in him Dean would never be able to shoot Sam, and Dean and Chuck and Cas knew it.

Still, Chuck hadn’t really noticed how much Dean changed until the 2009 version was standing in front of him, and he could feel Cas’s agony at the old Dean following him around. It had been so long since he had seen the Dean he fell for instead of what he had become. There was also relief, later on.

Cas knew he was going to die on that mission, and seeing the old Dean had been a reminder. He knew he would make the same choices all over again, but it was nice to remember why.

He could feel twin spikes of pain when Dean sent them on the suicide run. Dean smothered it down, refusing to drag Cas back out and tell him to go back to the camp. He knew Cas wouldn’t have listened anyway. Cas smothered it down because he knew that this was between Sam and Dean, and he would have been an unwelcome interloper.

In the end, when Cas died he just hoped he would see Sam and Dean in the afterlife and maybe be closer to the angel he used to be. Dean hoped his brother and his angel would be there wherever he ended up, and that maybe he could finally make it up to Sammy and Cas for letting them down.

They died at the same time, and as is common with those three, Chuck has no idea what happened next.


End file.
